De Gids. Jaargang 139

[p. 669]

Philip Ramp Near & Far

Words arrogant and paranoid.
Careening and canals.
Beer can really make a glass.
Shop fronts look fulfilled.
But it's shit! Pig! You disgust me!
The sun finally pulls us apart:
grills us,
then gives us a small pomegranate.

Rain loiters outside each bar.
Thin shanks shiver on slender stools
a city of twanging twats.
Porcelain windmills and wooden shoes
in windows.
Egyptian cigarettes in locked drawers.
People dry humping on the moral public grass
while we play Dog Shit On The Sidewalk.
A policeman picks his nose and chuckles.
Bicycles. Queens.
The sterner forms of opulence:
don't miss bets and don't make them.
A language like a stomach upset.

Boxer shorts cost too much.
Buildings lean over the streets.
Spoons corrode with honey
and Europe with Americans.
The well-being of Dutch coffee
opens you to the syllogisms of clothes.
But how about it? What?
My goddamn mail!!
The Zuider Zee is a ritsy suburb.

[p. 670]

 

What do ducks do in winter?

 

What do you do?

 

Flesh eats clothes. Smoke air.

 

Me me.

 

There will be porcelain bards

 

waddling off assembly lines,

 

museums of people for pictures to look at

 

and viruses getting vaccinated for penicillin.

 

Such are the fantasies

 

I borrow from my five miracles.

 

Oh, it's standing, standing, standing room only.

 

We've done our fucking best.

[p. 671]

A Nice Place To Be From

 

A sea wind freshens Dutch sheep

 

as canals meander above the land.

 

Layer after layer of ho-hum cloud

 

crawl over countryside flatter than piss on a plate.

 

Even green is mean with its color.

 

But the fists of rain hurt just enough

 

to be called healthy

 

and a good cigar is sturdy.

 

Ja. Ja.

 

 

 

The people of the brief plain, near horizon,

 

night portioned into polder-sized dreams

 

of dykes and like erotica.

 

And stand up straight!

 

The last person caught slouching

 

turned into a Belgian.

 

Look, here is a house, a cow, two neat pigs,

 

a farmer marching slowly in his field

 

and over there the same

 

perhaps a fresh dab of paint but the same.

 

It's so in place

 

it must be screwed to the soil.

 

Add centuries of that rain

 

tending those meagre, indomitable beauties

 

and get a corner of eternity

 

dragging in a puddle.

 

After all this time

 

it's even driven their God mad

 

and their only comment is,

 

‘Well, I'll be damned.’

[p. 672]

I Wish I Could Be Fair

 

Somehow Holland seems to have

 

more things for me to hate than elsewhere.

 

Here hunched in a nicey-nice room

 

enclosed in quaintness

 

and a cycle of anxious landlord pleasantries

 

I work myself up

 

to an intense fury

 

over a handful of odious and unimportant objects.

 

Flatulent rabbits droop like diseased tongues

 

from the mouths of two porcelain dogs

 

offerings before a plugged ass

 

bulbed cunt blob I think was meant as

 

Buddha.

 

Here we have a fake alabaster letter opener

 

there a simulated jade john pull.

 

Doilies under glass.

 

Wallpaper of obese fruit.

 

A room of smug clues:

 

see, we have taste and the rest of it.

 

Cold people faking feeling

 

abracadabra: the human touch without fingerprints.

 

Most of the time

 

they don't give a damn what you think.

 

You get beer in Coke glasses

 

shrimps cut from a pig

 

plastic flowers with thorns

 

and that steady old drag of a sky

 

tied to dykes.

 

It's not fair I know.

 

Maybe it's just I'm half Dutch.

 

Anyway, if they come in here once more this morning

 

and ask me, ‘everything is fine?’

 

I'll treat them to my other half.